Briefing from ROAPE Volume 3 Number 7Unionism among Black Workers

In the 1950s and early 1960s black workers were organized -by the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and the national stay-at-home as a form of political opposition to apartheid was formulated by the Congress Alliance of which SACTU was a part. Stay-at-homes were organized every year from 1950 to 1961. SACTU itself was crushed by political repression in the early 1960s although large sections of workers in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg still feel part of the movement of working class struggle that SACTU led. Many of these workers have joined the trade unions formed since 1973.